


A Man of Letters

by krabapple



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-31
Updated: 2012-01-31
Packaged: 2017-10-30 10:36:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/330795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/krabapple/pseuds/krabapple
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John reads.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Man of Letters

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers all the way through Season 2, including _The Reichenbach Fall_.
> 
> Obligatory post-Reichenbach fix-it fic.

Lestrade comes by Harry’s a week after. John doesn’t ask how Lestrade knew where he was, or where he’d gotten the address. Probably talked to Mrs. Hudson for one, and for another, well, he is a DI. An address isn’t hard to track down.

Harry’s on a trip to New York for work. Been gone three days now. The silence is deafening.

John lets Lestrade follow him to the kitchen. He pours enough water into the kettle for one. 

Lestrade hasn’t said a word, but he finally sighs. John gets a mug out of the cupboard.

“John,” he starts.

John doesn’t turn around. “Don’t. Even.”

Lestrade sighs again. “You can’t freeze me out forever.”

John turns around, and his hand is perfectly still. “Try me,” he says.

Lestrade finally leaves when John goes upstairs to the guest room with his mug.

 

***

 

Ella leans forward, puts her hands in her lap. It’s the pose she uses when she wants to indicate the importance of what she is about to say. John thinks it’s a subconscious move -- uncalculated, uncontrived. It’s a relief. 

“There’s something else you need to say, John.”

“I know.” John clears his throat. He’s not being sarcastic; he _does_ know.

“You can say it here.”

“I know.”

“Then . . .”

John closes his eyes. Opens them. “I can’t.”

“If it seems silly to you, pointless without the person here --”

“No.” John shakes his head. “No.” 

“All right.”

They sit in silence for the next 40 minutes, the rest of John’s session.

They’ll probably do it again next week.

 

***

It takes him six weeks to get back to Baker Street. 

Mrs. Hudson hugs him and gives him a plate of biscuits to take upstairs, but she doesn’t cry. 

They’re standing in her kitchen when he says, “The rent. I.” He’s holding the plate in his right hand.

Mrs. Hudson shakes her head. “Don’t worry about it, love.”

He shakes his head, too. “I. No. That’s not.” He pauses. “That’s not fair to you. I can still pay my share, but.” He stops.

Mrs. Hudson puts a hand on his arm. “Then pay your share, if it makes you feel better.”

He does. It doesn’t make him feel better.

 

***

He goes to the club, waits for Mycroft in the silent sitting room. He spends most of the day there, until Mycroft finally walks in during the late afternoon. John follows Mycroft back to a private room.

“I’m beginning to see the point of the silence,” John says.

“John.”

“I want his things,” John says.

“John, there’s no need for you --”

“I want his things,” John says, a little louder. Maybe a little too loud. Too long in the silence. “You took them.” He stops, tries again. “You had Baker Street cleaned out. I don’t know what you did with them, but I want his things back.”

Mycroft is shaking his head. “That’s not necessary.”

“It’s necessary to me.”

Mycroft narrows his eyes, like he’s sizing John up. It’s not nearly the first time John has seen that look on Mycroft. It’s not nearly the first time John has hated it.

Mycroft hands John a key to a storage unit, and texts him the address. 

The next day, a car pulls up outside 221B and three men unload boxes into Sherlock’s room. None of them speak even a word to John.

 

***

The cane is back within two months. John doesn’t even try to fight it.

 

***

John opens the sitting room door to find Donovan on the landing. He begins to laugh; he can’t help it. That only makes Donovan scowl, which only makes John laugh harder.

When he gets control of himself, John says, “Bloody hell -- what the fuck could you possibly want?”

Donovan blinks.

“Seriously. Why would you come here? You can’t possibly be here to apologize.” John lets out a giggle. It’s the first time he’s laughed.

Donovan’s jaw sets. “I did what had to be done. What made sense.”

John wipes a hand across his face. “What made sense. Really? Did it make sense that the footprints we found were three sizes smaller than his? That none of his shoes ended up matching the prints? That we could verify his whereabouts when the children were taken, and for all of the time they were missing, including when the fax was sent?”

“He could have hired -- according to the paper, did hire -- ”

John bursts out laughing again. “Christ, and to think I used to take up for you.” He shakes his head. “Mrs. Hudson will probably have cake if you want some on your way out.”

“It’s not my fault, John,” Donovan says.

“Now, that, that is true. Huh. Don’t worry, Sally, you’re absolved.” He doesn’t make the sign of the cross, merely gestures her toward the stairs.

 

***

John and Mrs. Hudson have Christmas together. She bakes biscuits and a cake. They eat slowly and have their tea.

John goes upstairs alone.

***

John visits the storage unit. It’s lined with neatly stacked boxes, nearly full; it’s the cleanest space John has ever seen associated with Sherlock. 

Every box is full of books.

John genuinely smiles for the first time, since.

 

He takes a book out of a box and home on a whim.

Turns out he grabbed _Team of Rivals_ by Doris Kearns Goodwin. John starts thumbing through the book on the cab ride home; nearly every page bears Sherlock’s scrawled handwriting: notes, underlines, annotations.

On page 177, there is simply “Wrong!” written in the margin.

John stays up all night reading. He’s groggy in the morning, but he can make his coffee without his hand shaking.

 

***

He dreams about it. Of course he does.

Some of them end the same way as the reality did -- John sitting on the sidewalk, blood all around Sherlock’s head. When he wakes up from these, he’s shaking, and he won’t be able to go back to sleep. Not enough concentration to read. He knows he should get up, make a cup of tea. Maybe watch some crap telly or faff about on the internet.

He doesn’t do any of these things. He can’t quite bring himself. Instead he just stays in bed, staring up at the shadows on the ceiling until the daylight comes in and creeps across to the small water stain near the door. 

In some of the dreams, they are still in London, but it’s a war zone. Bullets flying, explosions. The cab John gets out of in front of St. Bart’s bursts into flames as soon as his feet hit the pavement. Sherlock starts to cross the street toward him, and John is just about to smile, when Sherlock’s shoulder explodes, spraying blood and bone at John’s feet. Sherlock drops to his knees like he’s praying, but his eyes are clouded over already.

John flips the light on when he wakes up from one of those. He sits up and tries to swallow the bile in his throat.

In still other dreams, Sherlock falls. He falls and falls from the roof of St. Bart’s, his coat splaying out around him, whipping in the wind. But somehow he lands on his feet, lithe and graceful, smiling. He crosses the street to where John is standing; John smiles as Sherlock steps right into his personal space. That’s Sherlock, no sense of reasonable personal space -- always too much or too little, that’s him. Sherlock is just leaning down, and it occurs to John to tilt his face up, in acceptance and reception.

That’s when he wakes up, half-hard and with an ache in his gut. Always the same. Always ends before. Before. He takes a breath, then another. Turns over, closes his eyes, tries not to think. Counts up by threes until he either goes back to sleep or can go to the kitchen and turn on the electric kettle.

 

***

 

It turns out that Sherlock’s books are boxed by subject. John starts bringing a box home at a time.

It takes him six weeks and a white board to get through the economics section.

 

***

John has just started in on Sherlock’s biology collection (an easier subject for him; more familiar, though the botany section in the middle was a bit of a ringer) when he hears footsteps on the stairs. A well-known tread: Lestrade’s.

Lestrade bursts through the sitting room door a moment later.

“Drugs bust?” John looks up from his book.

“Case,” Lestrade says simply.

“Case? I don’t.” John clears his throat. “I don’t do those.”

“You’ll want to do this one.”

“I’m a doctor,” John says, as if this is reasonable. Which he thinks it is.

“So come to the morgue with me.”

John sighs. Shuts his book. 

 

Thirty minutes later, John’s standing in St. Bart’s morgue, Molly hovering somewhere behind his left shoulder. There’s a woman about his own age on the slab in front of him. She has dark black hair, straight, long, coming down past her shoulders and onto the sheet.

“Who is she?” John asks.

“Moriarty’s sister,” Lestrade says.

John looks up quickly. “Shouldn’t you say Richard Brooks’ sister?”

Lestrade’s gaze could cut glass. “Jesus, John, you don’t have to make it --”

“So hard?”

Lestrade lowers his eyes. Looks at the woman. “Jane Moriarty, 41. Ran her DNA through the system, got a match.”

“A match on the wrong name?”

“Christ.” Lestrade rubs his eyes. “A match on the bloke who stood trial for breaking into the Tower of London, the Bank of England, and the penitentiary, yeah. Except she wasn’t going by the name Brooks; she was registered with her landlord, her employer and her bank as Jane Moriarty. Birth records confirm it.”

“But no sign of a brother in those records,” John says.

“The DNA was conclusive,” Molly says. John turns around to look at her. “I, I. I saw it myself. Definitely brother and sister.”

“How’d she end up here?” John asks.

“Bullet to the chest. Russian assassin moved in across the street.”

“Picked him up already,” John surmises.

“Confession.” Lestrade lifts his chin. “Wants us to play ball with Interpol for him, but won’t say who hired him.”

John shrugs. Brooks, Moriarty. It’s the same to him; same man, same truth. “What’s in a name?” he asks. “That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”

 

***

Sherlock did not read books as much as converse with them, John understands. His notes litter every page, a kind of hand-written voice inked in margins, indexes, the backs of cover pages.

John has to abandon the science section in the middle of physics; he can follow popularly written Hawking, but the academics makes his head hurt. Sherlock has already declared string theory _an absurdity on the level of God Himself_ , so John thinks he probably knows as much as he needs to on the subject.

 

***

John gets a text from Mycroft. He wants to ignore it, but he can’t. Tells Mrs. Hudson he’s going to the Tesco.

They meet in a church four blocks from Baker Street.

“This is weird, even for you,” John says as Mycroft slides into the pew next to him. The church is empty, but John’s voice is still hushed.

“I didn’t want us observed,” Mycroft says. 

John very nearly rolls his eyes.

“I know you saw her,” Mycroft starts. 

There’s silence as John absorbs this. “The sister.”

“The sister,” Mycroft confirms. “It’s a delicate matter, Dr. Watson.”

“I don’t care who ordered it,” John says. “Or why. I’m not pursuing it. I assumed it was Moriarty himself.”

“A fair point.” That’s the closest Mycroft will ever get to an admission, and John knows it. “As long as you don’t pursue it.”

“Moriarty isn’t my problem anymore,” John says.

 

***

The theology books surprise John. Augustine, Aquinas, Julian of Norwich, Luther, Calvin, Kierkegaard, Barth, both Niebuhrs. There’s a smattering of other religious texts, books on Buddhism and Hinduism and the writings of the Dali Lama. 

Sherlock had a running argument with Bonhoeffer that stretches across multiple books, not all of them Bonhoeffer's. 

Frankly, Sherlock had a running argument both with and against God across every theological text, including the Bible.

It makes John smile.

 

***

“John. I’m not sure what the problem is.” Ella sits back in her chair.

“It just. I don’t know. Feels obsessive.”

“Are you working?”

“No. But I have a lead on an A&E job. Sent my CV yesterday.”

“All right. Do you see other people?”

“Mrs. Hudson. Harry, sometimes. Mike Stamford and I have plans to go to the pub next week.”

“Good.”

“Yeah.”

“But you still think there’s a problem.”

“Yeah.”

“What do you like most about it?”

“It’s like . . . it’s like having a conversation. With him.”

“You mean the notes he left. You like reading them.”

“Yes.”

“John. Everyone needs a coping mechanism. A release. There’s no shame in it.”

“I’m not ashamed.”

“But you think it’s a problem.”

“You keep saying that.”

“So do you.”

“Shouldn’t I . . . isn’t this just. Hanging on?”

“You think you need to let go.”

“Will you stop repeating what I say back to me?”

“I want you to hear how it sounds. It’s been less than a year, John. You’re human, and grief is natural. Let me ask you this: if you had a patient who had lost someone close to them, and they expressed to you that they thought they should have moved on, what would you say?”

“That there’s no timetable for grief; that the patient needs to take care of him or herself.”

“So why are you different?”

“I don’t know.”

 

***

John learns three things about Sherlock’s fiction collection: 1) that Sherlock read fiction in the first place; 2) that it is vast and varied; 3) that while Sherlock has read widely, he has a penchant for both the Romantics and the Modernists. Byron and Shelly; Hemingway and Stein. Trust Sherlock to relish drama _and_ spare prose.

Turns out he loathed _The Great Gatsby_ , though. 

_These people are all idiots. Every last one of them._

John shakes his head and puts the book back in the box.

 

***

John gets the job at the A&E. As jobs go, it’s fine. Friendly co-workers; good for a pint or two every now and again, smiles in the mornings, and tea when things have been busy.

He tries to convince himself he’s not bored.

It doesn’t work very well.

 

***

Sherlock’s philosophy books take up several boxes. Almost anything John could think of, and much, much more, is there. Aristotle, Decartes, Hobbs, Locke, Plotinus, Hume, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Kristeva, Sartre, Wittgenstein, and piles and piles of others. Sherlock has intermixed the Greek poets and dramatists in with the philosophers; his copy of _The Republic_ has fallen apart and been taped together. John wonders why Sherlock didn’t just get a new copy when the front cover falls off (again). As he tapes the cover back on (again), John sees that it bears an inscription: 

_**To Sherlock, my son,** _

_**May you always live on the surface and be able to gaze upon the sun.** _

_**Love always and forever,  
Mummy** _

 

John takes the book and places it on the shelf where he can see it from his chair.

***

John clears his throat.

“John,” Ella says. “Do you think you can say it?”

John nods, tries to breathe. “He was my best friend.”

Ella waits. John can feel the seconds ticking away in his bones.

“And I loved him.”

Ella sits back. “As a friend?”

John opens his eyes. The sun feels too bright; it blinds his eyes and prickles his skin. “No.” His voice cracks on the word. He shakes his head. “As more than a friend.”

“Yes.”

“I never told him. Sherlock died, and I never told him.”

“It’s okay, John.”

John shakes his head: no. But he can breathe; he inhales deeply. “It’s not okay. But it’s what’s left.”

 

***

John comes home from work three days later to find Sherlock sitting on the stairs leading up to the flat. He’s holding a book in his hands, long fingers wrapped around the spine. He’s dressed in his usual way, in a tailored black suit and charcoal grey button down. He looks whole.

John leans back against the door.

“John,” Sherlock says.

John shakes his head, holds his hand to his eyes.

There’s silence for a long time.

John takes a deep breath, moves his hand, stares at Sherlock. “Moriarty?”

“Dead,” Sherlock says. “Before I even --”

John holds up a hand so he won’t finish.

“By his own hand,” Sherlock adds.

John nods. “Then why?”

“Everyone has their pressure point.”

John’s eyes narrow. “Me.”

“You. Mrs. Hudson. Lestrade. Gunmen on all of you. Only one signal would stop them.”

“That took you a year.”

“A spider’s web is a tangled weave.”

A thought occurs to John. “The sister?”

“The last piece -- his last piece. He actually funneled his money to her; she didn’t know about it -- thought it a trust fund from their parents. Her death was the last one Moriarty ordered, should everything fall apart. I had to make sure she was the end.”

“She was,” John says.

“She was.”

221B is oddly quiet.

“I dream about it,” John says.

Sherlock stands up. “I tried to send you away.”

“You tried -- Christ, Sher --” John can’t finish.

Sherlock comes down the stairs, stops in front of John. John can feel Sherlock’s gaze even though he’s looking away, staring at the floor.

“Are you going to hit me?” Sherlock asks.

“I’m definitely thinking about it.”

“That’s fair.”

“That’s fair? Sherlock you _died_.” John throws up his hands, but he still doesn’t look at Sherlock.

“I clearly did not die,” Sherlock says.

This brings John’s head up. “ _Clearly_.” It’s bitter; he can’t help it. He wants to laugh and scream at the same time. He wants to punch Sherlock in the face as much as he wants to run back through the front door.

“John.” Sherlock’s voice is gentle, _gentle_. John closes his eyes. “I brought you something.”

“Sanity? Peace of mind? Painkiller for this headache I can feel coming?”

Sherlock holds out a book.

“A book. That’s . . .” _oddly appropriate_ John thinks, but he doesn’t say it. Wait. Too appropriate. “You’ve been watching me.”

“Not watching. Not exactly. Just . . . sometimes.” 

Sherlock at a loss for words really is something. If only John could take advantage. “I really hate your family.”

“You’re not the only one.”

John feels a bubble of hysterical laughter rise up for a moment. The whole thing is surreal. He takes the book from Sherlock. It’s lovely, a first-edition hardback. _The Things They Carried_ , by Tim O’Brien. John looks up, meets Sherlock’s eyes for the first time.

Sherlock looks away. “I didn’t think you had read it; I thought you might find it . . . I thought you might find the subject something you could relate to yourself.”

“Can you relate to it?” John’s voice is soft.

“I might have gained some insight over the past year, yes.”

Sherlock Holmes, a private soldier in his own private war. John shakes his head.

“I -- thank you.”

Sherlock nods shortly.

John grips the book. “Whatever you’re carrying . . . you can put it down now.”

“Can I?”

“You’re home now.”

A ghost of a smile tugs at the corners of Sherlock’s mouth. “Yes.”

They look at each other a moment. John is suddenly deeply grateful, a gut-deep, bone-warming sensation. He never thought he’d see that face again.

“You’re home, too, John,” Sherlock says. “Put it down.”

John steps forward. “I don’t even know if you do this.”

“I do. I had been . . . abstaining. But you are always an exception.” Sherlock’s voice has gone low.

John leans up and Sherlock leans down and then their mouths are meeting. John always forgets how warm Sherlock is, how beneath the skin there are tendons and muscles and nerves and blood rushing, a beating heart.

They part slightly, still close enough to feel each other breathe.

“I love you,” John says.

Sherlock takes a breath to speak. John stops him by squeezing his bicep.

“If you say ‘I know’ I will kick you in the shins,” John clarifies.

Sherlock smiles, mouth crinkling at the corners. “You’re the only reason I came back.”

John looks Sherlock in the eye. Sherlock is being absolutely honest, he knows. With Moriarty gone, Sherlock could have done anything, particularly with the means he has at his disposal and the odd freedom that comes with death, an identity gone, a new one created. Instead, he came back to 221B Baker Street.

Instead, he came back to John.

John knows what that means. 

John leans in, kisses Sherlock again. Sherlock is ardent in returning the kiss, opening John’s mouth and flicking his tongue over John’s bottom teeth. John shivers.

“My room,” John says.

Sherlock moves back slightly. “My room.”

John laughs, actually laughs. Trust Sherlock to argue. “We can’t. Your room is full of books.” He takes Sherlock’s hand and leads him up the stairs.

John’s room is sparse: bed, nightstand and lamp, bureau. Books are stacked on the floor; _A Farewell to Arms_ on the nightstand. John closes the door, leads Sherlock to the bed. Sherlock puts a hand on the nape of John’s neck, pulls him in for a kiss.

“Too many clothes,” Sherlock says, brushing his nose against John’s.

“Yeah,” John agrees. He toes off his shoes, puts a hand over Sherlock’s where Sherlock is attempting to unbutton his shirt. “Let me.”

Sherlock nods, dropping his hands. John starts with the suit jacket, sliding it off Sherlock’s shoulders, over his arms. He puts it on top of the bureau. The shirt is next; John unbuttons one button at a time, pressing a kiss to Sherlock’s chest after every button is undone. He takes care of the buttons on the cuffs, pressing a single kiss to each wrist. John slides his hands underneath the fabric at the shoulders, palming Sherlock’s shoulders as he moves the fabric over and off. He lets the shirt fall to the floor. The belt is next, John dropping to his knees, the very action causing Sherlock to gasp, a sharp intake of breath. John works the belt free and unbuttons Sherlock’s trousers. He pulls the trousers over Sherlock’s hips, exposing low-slung silk boxers and Sherlock’s navel. John kisses Sherlock’s navel, presses open mouthed kisses to each hip. Sherlock shudders. John moves to take off Sherlock’s shoes and Sherlock has to balance on his shoulders as John takes the shoes and socks off. John pulls the trousers off the rest of the way, throws them to the side. He goes back up on his knees and presses his face against Sherlock’s hip, breathes deeply. Sherlock’s stomach twitches.

Sherlock is already hard, his erection tenting the front of his boxers. John slides a palm experimentally up Sherlock’s length. He smiles when Sherlock bites his lip.

“You still have too many clothes on,” Sherlock says; it’s almost a growl.

“One more thing,” John says, hooking his fingers into Sherlock’s waistband, drawing the boxers down so that Sherlock can step out of them.  
Sherlock raises an eyebrow, looks pointedly up and down John’s still fully-clothed body. John grins and begins to strip, all business, quick and efficient. Soon they are both fully naked, standing at the foot of John’s bed.

“Come, then,” John says, holding out his hand to bring Sherlock to the bed.

“That is the general idea.” Sherlock smirks, allowing John to pull him onto the bed.

“Smartarse. Might want to give that one a wide berth.” John pulls Sherlock in for a kiss, allowing Sherlock to crawl over him and top of him. John sighs.

“Good?” Sherlock asks, breathing a wet trail down John’s neck.

It’s so _polite_ John nearly laughs. Instead, John nods, tipping his chin up to allow Sherlock greater access. Sherlock takes his cue and noses John's neck, pulling the skin in and sucking, ending with a small bite.

Sherlock places a hot open mouth kiss into the dip between John’s collarbones, then licks his way across John’s left collar bone to his shoulder. There’s a mass of scar tissue there, a web of lines radiating, leading across and down John’s body. Sherlock raises himself up on his hands so that he can see better, his eyes following every bit of John’s skin. John tries to relax, to remember that this is _Sherlock_ , that of course he’s observing, calculating, filing information away. The only thing that makes this different than all the other times John has seen Sherlock do this, at crime scenes, in pubs, in cabs, even in the kitchen with him, is the look in Sherlock’s eyes: wonder. It makes John bite back a groan, thrust his hips off the bed. The thrust brings his hard-on in contact with the hollow of Sherlock’s hipbone, and John has to close his eyes. Sherlock drops his head, inhales sharply.

“There will be more time to look later,” John manages, thrusting again.

“Next time,” Sherlock says. “And the next, and the next and the next.”

John fists his hand in Sherlock’s curls, pulls Sherlock’s head down for a kiss, hot and breathy. “For as long as you want.” He kisses Sherlock again.

“I don’t see an end to wanting this,” Sherlock says, leaning down for another kiss.

“Excellent,” John says, leaning up to capture Sherlock’s mouth again.

Sherlock breaks the kiss and pants for a moment before sliding down and taking John’s cock in his mouth so quickly that John actually shouts, bucking his hips. “ _Sherlock_.” When he can, John looks down, sees Sherlock’s dark hair, curls swaying. Sherlock doesn’t stop, doesn’t even pause, just continues to apply suction, easing up every now and then to use his tongue. It’s the most relentless blowjob John has ever had, and by far the best.

“Christ. Sherlock --”

Sherlock pauses a bit, situates himself so that he can look up John.

John comes then and there, so hard his vision whites out at the edges.

When John comes back to himself a bit, Sherlock is nuzzling in his neck, breathing deeply, thrusting on John’s stomach, tilting so he can thrust against John’s hip. John starts to reach down between them when Sherlock stops him with a bite on the collarbone.

“If you touch me, I’ll come,” Sherlock says.

“That’s the idea,” John manages.

Sherlock raises himself up so he can loom over John, make eye contact. He’s still thrusting, a smooth, hard line across John’s hip. John shudders, holds Sherlock’s gaze.

“Let me,” John says.

Sherlock nods, still propped on his hands, the muscles in his forearms bunching with effort. John reaches down, takes Sherlock in hand. _Holy hell._

Sherlock’s right -- it doesn’t take much, but it’s more than enough for John right now, looking into Sherlock’s eyes, feeling the hot length of Sherlock in his palm, knowing he had believed he’d never have this. Three, four, five pulls and Sherlock comes, closing his eyes, hair falling in his face. Sherlock unguarded, without artifice, not even the tiniest bit. It’s the most beautiful thing John has ever seen.

When Sherlock opens his eyes, John is still looking at him. Sherlock smiles, and that’s unguarded, too.

John grins back.

 

***

 

John still dreams that night. He’s back in front of St. Bart’s, getting out of the cab. Sherlock is on the roof, and John thinks _Oh, no. Oh, God_. His hand goes to his pocket, where his phone is ringing. It’s Sherlock, but John can’t understand him. Too much static.

“Sherlock? Sherlock! Just wait. I’m coming up.” John holds his hand up, palm out.

Sherlock doesn’t wait. He jumps. John’s eyes follow him; he can’t help it.

This time, Sherlock lands feet first, graceful and shockingly lightly, as if he does this all the time. He walks over to John, hands in his coat pockets. He leans down, and John tilts his face up, and Sherlock kisses him, familiar and just a wee bit lingering, like this is something they do all the time. _Hello. I missed you._

Sherlock pulls back. “Ready? Could be dangerous.”

“Yeah. Yeah. All right.” John licks his lips.

Sherlock turns and starts sprinting down the street, John following.

“Take my hand,” Sherlock says, and John does.

There’s no need to remind Sherlock that they need to coordinate -- they are already running in perfect sync.

 

***

When John wakes up the next morning, Sherlock is already awake, wrapped in a sheet on the bed, reading his copy of _The Republic_. A cup of tea, still hot, sits on John’s nightstand, on top of _A Farewell to Arms_.

“Making me a cup of tea is not going to get you off the hook,” John says, but he sits up and sips from the cup anyway.

“Duly noted,” Sherlock says. “Any time table for when the shouting and/or punching might begin? I assume you are still thinking about taking such liberties.”

“No. Part of the fun is that you’ll never know when it’s coming.”

“John, that’s positively playing dirty.” But the corner of Sherlock’s mouth twitches up.

“Duly noted,” John says, and leans over and kisses Sherlock.

 

***

The O’Brien novel is inscribed:

_**John,** _

_**One more miracle.** _

_**Sherlock** _


End file.
